A leadership analysis of George Orwell's Animal Farm

Sammanfattning: This essay aims to research the writing of George Orwell by analysing the four main pigs in his novel Animal Farm from a linguistic and rhetorical perspective. The paper's purpose is to explore occurrences of chosen phenomena tied to linguistic and rhetorical theory, with the goal to create an understanding of how Orwell portrays his characters exercising leadership and how their communicative strategies differ or coincide. In order to investigate occurrences of linguistic and rhetorical phenomena, the method of qualitative content analysis with a directed approach will be applied. This method of choice leaves room for interpretation based on the chosen theories and can assist in answering the research question. The results incline towards the pigs in Orwell’s novel applying various forms of linguistic and rhetorical strategies, often to persuade, manipulate and/or deceive the animals. Additionally, it is prevalent that there are both similarities and differences in the pigs' use of leadership as well as the use of linguistic and rhetorical strategies. Lastly, the paper will discuss and reflect on the results in order to draw conclusions and answer the research question.